Okay after playing (and then casting) W&M for a fourth time here is my comments.

* Units

- I really like Scouts now. I feel they are balanced and really help Protoss anti-air. They aren't too strong; they give something to fight Vikings but are still fairly weak against ground.- I don't like how powerful Scourge have become. Because of the smart AI for scourge they NEVER overkill. Ok, it's fine if you throw them against mass void rays, but keep in mind that the more you have super mobile AA the more units like carriers and BC's, which are already seriously screwed in many circumstances, suffer. Even on these maps it takes bc's ages to cross any amount of space. They can't outrun HSM, they can't outrun vikings, they can't fight mass corruptors/void rays/even goliaths. But scourge is just the final nail in the coffin. I'm speaking about BC's specifically.

in SC1 BC damage was all front-loaded in one shot. With a number of bc's they had a standing chance vs scourge because they 1-shotted scourge. In sc2, their damage comes in a volley - no way do they have any kind of defense vs scourge. They just die, just like that, in an instant. As soon as you see BC's you just a-move scourge into them and they die. No problem.

I don't know how to solve this problem. You don't want to change vanilla units that much, and I understand. Since there is no super BC unit yet, a suggestion I have for one is to give it a short-range turret that attacks nearby units and does large bonus versus light in addition to whatever else it might have. This will offer it some protection against scourge. The super siege carrier I suggested wouldn't have an attack suitable to kill mass anti-air, but it could have an immortal-style shield to take hits from scourge spam. As it is, scourge feel way too OP with both splash, cloaking, charge, and huge damage on top of super smart AI.

- Dragoons are insanely overpowered. They are overpowered because they are ultra cost effective. 8 range makes them totally immune to any static defense in the game except for sieged tanks, yet their DPS is so high they still do comparable non-splash DPS to tanks anyways. They match every other ranged unit in the game except for Odins, Immortals, and Colossi. All of this for the exact same cost of a stalker. Dumb.

Krazy's argument against this is that ravens are also very strong. This is true - ravens are strong when they reach critical mass. But keep in mind, a raven costs 200 gas. A dragoon costs 50. These games almost always come down to gas. This means that effectively you can get 4 dragoons for the cost of 1 raven. If Krazy's macro were better I'd have died so easily in that game, and he'd easily have fended off DrumsofPorn.

Ravens also rely on multiple expensive upgrades and mana. A raven can cast a single HSM at max mana and is then reduced to 75 mana. All it can do with this is drop a turret that, surprise surprise, is outranged by dragoons and doesn't benefit from upgrades. The turret is great to kill walls of cannons with DD's. HSM is great to kill swarms of units in huge numbers - but the investment is titanic. My legendary critical raven masses in 40-50 numbers are 40-50x200 gas. They can and will be overwhelmed with nothing but dragoon spam. To deal with dragoons I need tanks, thors, Odins AND ravens, as seen in game 3.

Oh yeah, and the new scourge just gib stacks of ravens in 1-2-3 without any hope to kill them before they hit you.

Odins are great vs dragoons but... eh. Krazy's learned that immortals + dragoons = you are god. Dragoons fill in the holes in protoss ground in a simple and hideous way. They need to be something like 150/75 and 7 range. Not enough of a nerf to make them useless but something to make them not the most cost effective and spammable unit in the game.

- Workers need to cost supply. Period. Maybe have a super expensive merchant worker that costs no supply, but regular workers MUST cost supply, as well as cliff workers. Absolute must.

* Map

- Further concerns about these issues spread to the map. SC2's gas economy is a clusterfuck of stupid with the addition of 2 geysers. Zerg is always floating minerals. Terran is always floating minerals. Protoss not so much. But gas is always at a premium.

To help alleviate the gas issue I fixed the single-gas expansions, changed the center of the map, and added some geyser-only bases blocked by cocks. Although Krazy complained about the cocks I felt they were serving their exact purpose by preventing fast-expanding to those locations. Most people seem to opt to expand to the islands regardless of the cocks, never kill them, and just mine from beside them. LOL? Enjoy your crippled gas economy.

I like that you can expand to an island and even make comebacks from island bases if people ignore you. All races besides P have an easy way of sieging islands. Mustaches, ravens, spec op hercules, ect. Whenever ricky gets to adding the siege carrier I suggested it'll be even better. But despite my contentness with the islands the map as a whole feels just... icky.

I want to take Krazy's big, open land map and use that as a basis for new terrain. Instead of high yields there would be an assortment of mineral-only, gas-only, and then standard expansions throughout the map. I like that there's a variety of ramps and raised areas that aren't islands but offer defensive postures anyways. If ricky wants to port his map to that terrain, I can rebalance and rebuild it a bit to suite my idea and present it as an alternative possibility if people like it.

Another thing - the map is still using old data. Check all of the beta patches and make sure the map is using those changes. Amongst them are fixes to PF's, HSM, and the new patch that changes tanks and such. Also notable is Thors, Void Rays, phoenixes moving shot, and other stuff.

Lavarinth wrote:And never again as the first map or I swear to God I'm going to..

Ill probably have that Phantom Mode map as the first map for the FFS event in the short term (as in until we find another map to "kill" time until more people arrive). Your real want is mostly to be able to play in the event in the next 5-30 minutes (instead of 1.5 to 3 hours) you do arrive.

However, I still intend to have W&M as the second map to play right after except to rehost Phantom Mode a second time in a row before we go to W&M.

IskatuMesk wrote:Okay after playing (and then casting) W&M for a fourth time here is my comments.

* Units

- I really like Scouts now. I feel they are balanced and really help Protoss anti-air. They aren't too strong; they give something to fight Vikings but are still fairly weak against ground.

Just to be sure, do you mean the Scouts with Light (newest for about 1-2 versions) or Armored (old)? Although otherwise, I did change the Scouts with Light so that they can kill void rays while yet die to phoenixes cost-effectiveness wise.

Against other races, I don't think there is any serious issues yet.

IskatuMesk wrote:- I don't like how powerful Scourge have become. Because of the smart AI for scourge they NEVER overkill. Ok, it's fine if you throw them against mass void rays, but keep in mind that the more you have super mobile AA the more units like carriers and BC's, which are already seriously screwed in many circumstances, suffer. Even on these maps it takes bc's ages to cross any amount of space. They can't outrun HSM, they can't outrun vikings, they can't fight mass corruptors/void rays/even goliaths. But scourge is just the final nail in the coffin. I'm speaking about BC's specifically.

Personally I believe that scourges should counter BCs and such. However, what really hurt is mostly the lack of combo bcs or carriers yet.

So far, the only thing I could think of would be to have some kind of "Immortal Shield" (but HP-wise like King Ultralisks have) that caps damage to 50-75 or something. Not sure if the normal ones should have them or combo ones, etc.

IskatuMesk wrote:I don't know how to solve this problem. You don't want to change vanilla units that much, and I understand. Since there is no super BC unit yet, a suggestion I have for one is to give it a short-range turret that attacks nearby units and does large bonus versus light in addition to whatever else it might have. This will offer it some protection against scourge. The super siege carrier I suggested wouldn't have an attack suitable to kill mass anti-air, but it could have an immortal-style shield to take hits from scourge spam. As it is, scourge feel way too OP with both splash, cloaking, charge, and huge damage on top of super smart AI.

I admit I might wanted to go a bit too overkill on mass air since I REALLY wanted to avoid games that the only thing you think is "Mass air & win".

IskatuMesk wrote:- Dragoons are insanely overpowered. They are overpowered because they are ultra cost effective. 8 range makes them totally immune to any static defense in the game except for sieged tanks, yet their DPS is so high they still do comparable non-splash DPS to tanks anyways. They match every other ranged unit in the game except for Odins, Immortals, and Colossi. All of this for the exact same cost of a stalker. Dumb.

My personal logic was to allow stalkers to be the weaker but "sneaky" (due to Blink) while the Dragoon being the assault version. However, I admit that in W&M, you usually prefer to assault rather than sneaking in (except cloaked transports pretty much).

So far, I reduced the Dragoons' range to 7. Upgrade still give +2 from 5 to 7. To compare, stalkers are still range 6.

In toss vs toss, I admit it comes down to Immortals+Dragoons battles but usually the one with the most Immortals (50 total dmg vs armored) wins as Dragoons (20 -> 10 dmg due Immortal's Shields) are only useful as backup vs air units in those scenarios.

Thus, ultimately before I change costs, I want to see how a range of 7 fares when structures can hit Dragoons back.

IskatuMesk wrote:***About ravens***

I don't intend to change Ravens more beyond changing their HKS missile's casting range back to standard melee. For a good while, they still had the beta's much longer range.

IskatuMesk wrote:Odins are great vs dragoons but... eh. Krazy's learned that immortals + dragoons = you are god. Dragoons fill in the holes in protoss ground in a simple and hideous way. They need to be something like 150/75 and 7 range. Not enough of a nerf to make them useless but something to make them not the most cost effective and spammable unit in the game.

Before a cost increase, I want to see how much a range 7 will change. In addition, in future plans, I intend to implement Advanced Research Merchants which one of its many researches would be "Great Blink" to extend the Stalker's blink range to 150%-200% which that alone might put Stalkers back ahead.

IskatuMesk wrote:- Workers need to cost supply. Period. Maybe have a super expensive merchant worker that costs no supply, but regular workers MUST cost supply, as well as cliff workers. Absolute must.

To be honest, that's the request I am the most surprised to hear especially when you did seem quite in favor of higher supply caps.

Concerning supply caps, I intended to have 0 worker supply cost but drop the total supply cap to 250. However, I am not sure if it should have a 0.5 worker supply cost and 250 cap or a 1 worker supply cost and a 300 cap.

IskatuMesk wrote:* Map

- Further concerns about these issues spread to the map. SC2's gas economy is a clusterfuck of stupid with the addition of 2 geysers. Zerg is always floating minerals. Terran is always floating minerals. Protoss not so much. But gas is always at a premium.

Gas will always be a premium in W&M but I don't mind that it is more accessible.

IskatuMesk wrote:To help alleviate the gas issue I fixed the single-gas expansions, changed the center of the map, and added some geyser-only bases blocked by cocks. Although Krazy complained about the cocks I felt they were serving their exact purpose by preventing fast-expanding to those locations. Most people seem to opt to expand to the islands regardless of the cocks, never kill them, and just mine from beside them. LOL? Enjoy your crippled gas economy.

Yeah, that's something I always wondered, especially when I did move again the rocks to avoid mains "outside" of rocks from blocking a newer main next to the minerals/gas that Krazy did complain.

IskatuMesk wrote:I want to take Krazy's big, open land map and use that as a basis for new terrain. Instead of high yields there would be an assortment of mineral-only, gas-only, and then standard expansions throughout the map. I like that there's a variety of ramps and raised areas that aren't islands but offer defensive postures anyways. If ricky wants to port his map to that terrain, I can rebalance and rebuild it a bit to suite my idea and present it as an alternative possibility if people like it.

Personally, I am favor of it since the current melee have just a few too many things that can add additional lag (all the special doodads, etc.) without much benefit.

The only thing I really request is to know if Krazy's map is truly made by him. With W&M being public eventually, I want to use melee maps with the authors' permission.

Alternatively we can try Thalraxal's map whenever he finishes it up.

I am fine with that too.

EDIT :

Another thing - the map is still using old data. Check all of the beta patches and make sure the map is using those changes. Amongst them are fixes to PF's, HSM, and the new patch that changes tanks and such. Also notable is Thors, Void Rays, phoenixes moving shot, and other stuff.

I am aware that it is using old data as often I have to change major things to get back standard melee functionality for many units. Recently, I managed to get mostly the Phoenix's attack on move feature (minus the "always look towards the enemy while moving" feature).

HSM got modified back to standard range.

For Planetary Fortress, I have no clue what was really changed.

I don't recall much of the Void Rays' changes (unless you mean the 3 levels of beam).

Not sure if Thors still have that splash AA.

Still didn't poke patch 1.1 stuff.

Dammit, too many little things to check and change.

EDIT 2 :Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I still have to implement RCX's mod which contains Corsairs and Valkyries for the scourge issue although I still have to test it more (and consider what W&M specific changes I want). Although even just making usual changes in W&M does take quite a lot of time.

There's a huge difference between dragoons and the other units, though. Marines don't counter mass void rays or carriers or bcs, Dragoons do. Marauders don't even hit air, and are nearly as expensive. Zerglings... well, the only reason DoW got anywhere with zerglings was because, quite frankly, people played badly and he didn't for the first 1/4 of the game. He didn't even have charge for his charging zerglings and was effectively spending more than necessary to just get regular zerglings.

Hydras still don't compare because they are far more frail.

The strength of Dragoons comes from the fact they are the most cost-effective multi-role unit. The reason why I suggest workers cost supply but keep supply at 300 is to alleviate some enormous glaring problems with sc2's melee. These problems, and those that have been introduced by this change in the first place, won't really be solved by your suggested change. Huge economic openings are supposed to be risky, but right now they are nearly risk-free because you don't even need supply. You can maintain 200 supply worker armadas without needing a single depot.

And this is where Dragoons come in. They are insanely cost effective. What is the strongest in these kinds of maps is that when you can sustain the income for something like mass dragoons, which is far faster to come across and easier to achieve than virtually anything else of similar power, it quickly degrades into a spamfest clusterfuck. To currently counter dragoons as Terran you literally need a combination of 4 other units, and a ton of them. To realistically kill Krazy in any duration shorter than an hour in game 3 after I had already made my push I'd basically have to suicide drop his production facilities with Odins between attacks just to slow mass production.

This all revolves around the mess that is sc2's gas income. That 50 gas cost makes Stalkers totally useless and Dragoons insanely good. Stalkers blink offers nothing in this map, it all comes down to numbers: the Dragoon wins hands down. Mass dragoons can potentially even trump mass Immortals in circumstances due to overlapping ranges vs chokes and such. I was able to defeat and hold off Krazy's mixed Dragoon/Immortal pushes with solely Dragoons due to the cheap and ease of spamming from warp gates. Some things can really fuck Dragoons, but not on sustained income with spammed production, which is exactly what occurs eventually. Even VR's at 150 a pop will deplete a lot of gas very fast and are considerably easier to deal with (in no short part due to being able to nuke any number of mass air relatively easily in a few seconds after buying a pile of scourge from whichever merchant sure to be selling them by now).

Being sneaky doesn't help you in a match like this unless it's with big units like Odins that can do a shitton of damage very fast. Dragoons fit into that category, but Stalkers do not. Stalkers are absolutely horrible in combat, and combat is what matters here.

Maybe some of these issues will evaporate with the introduction of a real map using logical terrain to abuse mass ground more reliably, but that will have to be a wait and see kind of thing.

Also, about VR's - I am sure their damage got altered between this map's data and release.

While I could increase the costs as suggested but I think the stalker will still be left behind anyway. Then again, I guess stalker will be left behind regardless of the non-dramatic changes to Dragoons. For increased costs, I guess the "older & costlier" model "excuse" could still fit especially considering that many SC1-into-SC2 units had increased costs and even increased supply costs. Honestly still not sure.

As a minor thing, Stalkers have 2.80 move or so while Dragoons have 2.30 move. Nothing major but just to take into global account.

Another thing might be to slightly buff the Stalker but I rather modify the Dragoon in some way or another instead.

By the way for Hydras, I recently added an upgrade (I think it was a beta upgrade based on the SC1 one) to make them move faster. I might consider either a +2 range upgrade instead of +1 or a +10-20 direct HP if they are still left in the dust.

As for workers & supply, ill follow that 1 supply workers while keeping a 300 supply cap considering that over 3-4 of you guys requested workers should cost supply. My original idea was to favor mass expanding to get lots of economy thus to mass buy thus to bring a swift end to the game. Obviously, it's not happening that much after 6-8 games which lasts quite a while.

However, I still intend to add limited-supply costing workers to Combo Merchants which will probably require Combo level 4 or 5. They will follow the cliff line of workers into "floating" (air movement while considered ground for enemy attacks) then the best one "floating" + only 0.5 supply cost. With future merchant tech types, it will make an unique reason to pick Combo over all other types.

When you start fucking with the established balance of melee by adding in tons of intentionally powerful units you encounter a lot of weird balance issues as a result. But the biggest problem of all is that Dragoons are now a baseline unit you can warp in where ever the hell you want. You don't just buy them from merchants, you spam them regardless. This throws a wrench into the already shaky balance of sc2, especially in regards to Protoss gateway units.

Currently, you really need Colossi to deal with GvG as Protoss. Storm is weak, it doesn't stack, ect. Feedback is still good, but most people don't make Templar anyway. Krazy tried them out and used them with various levels of effectiveness, but ultimately dragoons are still more cost effective.

Dragoons add something that makes them valuable in all circumstances. Their range, their damage, their health, and their cost are all pluses versus every other unit the Protoss have except for the Void Ray, who can do more damage with insta-hit attacks and is a lot more mobile (and is air ofc). But pound for pound, 3 dragoons are still better than 1 void ray.

This would not be a tremendous issue if they were merchant only. But they're not.

Vultures are kind of meh because mines only do 70 damage right now. They suck. Goliaths could probably use that campaign upgrade to fire land and air weapons at once, because they kind of suck too. Oddly enough vikings do more land damage still. Vikings, which get utterly dominated by any kind of land unit, still cost more gas than Dragoons.

Zerg can build scourge, which gives them a huge edge against air now, totally shifting the balance from their once crappy AA to their now insane AA. Also you let them make Kerrigan which I discovered much to my horror. The possibilities of Razor Swarm are very horrifying. Terran don't have any single mega unit like that yet.

Because of the insistence to add these new units to the melee building pool you've already totally screwed the existing balance of the game and avoiding changing the default units won't magically remedy that.

Unfortunately, the second I did add merchants, the balance is kind of screwed automatically. :p

My plans are more to have a relative balance in W&M since in all honesty, it would require full race overhauls to make things truly balanced (especially to your taste). Plus the time I would spend on lots of balance is not spend expanding the merchants, adding new features, etc. Seriously, everybody will complain of balance even if it's 100% perfect so I rather prefer to just fix/modify the worst and call it a day.

As for the Zerg, I believe the scourges are okay by themselves although I have made overpowered combo units of them. Then again, anything level 4 or level 5 of any merchant techtree WILL be overpowered else there would be little point for warlords to get them over standard units (which they can buy cheaply off C&F merchants that does drop prices).

The only thing I think I could do for scourges as any quick "fix" would be to drop their damage from 110 to 70-90 (which would also reflect on combo scourges).

For High Templar's Storm, I already buffed them with +1 AoE and +20 extra damage (80->100) so Storm is actually worthwhile. While it might not magically change everything but at least it's quite usable compared to standard melee. It's certain that I won't make Storm stack else everyone will just get High Templars just to mass storm everything in existence except very high HP units.

As for Kerrigan, I guess it was to ensure that Zerg no longer suck even with scourges and lurkers. I am surprised that I didn't see many lurkers from Zerg players when it is such a critical unit to turn the tides.

For Kerrigan's Razor Swarm, it can deal a lot of damage over time but I feel you can usually avoid like 50-75% of the damage for anything not below 50 HP by withdrawing your troops asap. Thus ultimately making it more of a "siege" spell to kill packed defense structures or a "barrier" spell. Like against mass mutalisks, it was slow enough that I could move them away with 30-40 damage each.

As for the lack of a Terran super unit, I didn't feel it was that much necessary considering all the extra campaign units they got to counter whatever that they are thrown at them.

For vultures, I guess I could improve the mines' damage although considering W&M is a money map and vultures only cost minerals (while gas is a premium), you can just get more vultures and spam more mines to make up for it. I can already imagine minefields of 50-200 of them for anyone really serious about them ... at 0 gas cost beyond the Spider Mines upgrade.

For Goliaths, I already did add a +3 air range upgrade for them to improve their range 6->9 making them the decent ground-to-air unit they should be according to my view. For the dual weapon uses, it's intended to be a research from the Adv.Research merchant.

Lavarinth wrote:I would- except I can show up at 6:15 the earliest and you guys spend 3 hours playing it at 6 that I never play it and miss half the event. (Burn.)

Hmm, did I said in a previous post that I intend to start the event with the Phantom Mode map then we move on to W&M? :p

EDIT : In other news for W&M, now I have a twisted situation for reapers.

Now I pretty have two "gangs" of reapers (reapers and all 3 combo types of reapers). One that which their Reaper Jump don't work while the other gang have their Reaper Jump work ... then I proceed to change all the weapons/armor upgrades and such to the "working" one ...

... and then odd thing happens, the "working" gang became the "non-working" gang and vice-versa.

I forgot my triggers auto-switch all trainable merchants units' Movers into "Flying" which naturally screw up the reapers' cliff jump if I pick merchant. I found out that it screwed up things is when I reassign trainable merchant units. I thought it was due to some odd research "overflow" or some actor bug/oddie that managed to creep inside my map.